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 1st Mariner Arena, Baltimore, MD
Wednesday February 1st. 2006.The audience got a great show, seems as it
is warmed up now for the Superbowl on Sunday. Photo ---> from Baltimore Sun.
Set list:
Jumping Jack Flash - Let's Spend The Night Together - Oh No Not You Again -
All Down The Line - Love Is Strong - Wild Horses - Midnight Rambler - Tumbing
Dice - Gimme Shelter - Intros - This Place Is Empty - Happy - Miss You - Start
Me Up - Get Off Of My Cloud - Honky Tonk Women - Sympathy For The Devil - Paint
It Black - Brown Sugar - You Can't Always Get What You Want (encore) -
Satisfaction (encore).
Reviews:
Rolling Stones rock
Baltimore
36 years after last
show here, time is still on their side
By Chris Kaltenbach Sun
Reporter
Thirty-six years have
passed since The Rolling Stones last played Baltimore, but Mick, Keith and the
boys made time seem utterly irrelevant Wednesday night with a relentless,
classics-heavy set of archetypal rock and roll that cemented their reputation as
... well, you know.
For more than three decades, the Stones have been ballyhooed as "The
World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band," a tag that has sometimes seemed more
like an albatross around the band's neck than a testimonial to the group's
collective talent and longevity.
But from the moment Keith Richards took to the front of
the stage to hammer out those uniquely explosive opening chords of "Jumpin'
Jack Flash" (the set started at 9:18 p.m., for those keeping track), the
Stones left no doubt that they had come to play, and to celebrate, and to rock
out.
Seconds after Richards set the pace, singer Mick Jagger launched himself onstage,
wearing a gold jacket over a black shirt and black leather pants. With his
characteristic mix of athleticism and bravado, he quickly introduced his
signature persona -- "I was born," goes the song's opening line,
"in a cross-fire hurricane" -- and showed that, while the years may
have added some lines to his face, they haven't removed a single spring from his
step. Would that we could all retain this sort of energy and charisma at 62.
Over the next two hours, the band would play 20 songs, from "Get Off My
Cloud" and "Paint It, Black" (with Richards' ringing guitar
substituting for the sitar played by the late Brian Jones when the song was
recorded in 1966) to "Tumbling Dice," "Miss You" and
"Love Is Strong." Jagger, alternately jabbing, pointing, prancing and
spinning, may have dominated the stage, but his bandmates had little trouble
holding their own as well. Richard, playing the cool, rebellious dark knight to
Jagger's court jester, seemed to be yanking sounds out of his guitar, playing
with an economy and fluidity that comes of having nothing left to prove, but
everything left to give. Playing the role of rambunctious little brother was Ron
Wood, who got carried away at times; his playing on "Tumbling Dice," a
song about taking chances when that's the only thing left to do, was
unnecessarily self-indulgent. And yet, his slide guitar on "Happy" was
one of the evening's highlights.
And then there's drummer Charlie Watts, the absolute personification of cool,
his strong, steady backbeat a model of percussive reliability.
"Hey Baltimore, we haven't been here for a long time, eh?" Jagger
announced after the band's third number, "Oh No, Not You Again," one
of only two songs they performed from their most recent album, A Bigger Bang.
"Quite a lot's happened since '69. The Colts have bolted. But the Ravens
won the Super Bowl in 2001."
The crowd ate it up, glad to have the Stones back in town. For its part, the
band played with spirit and vigor, displaying no ill effects whatsoever from
having been on the road for more than four months.
Unlike their performances at area shows last year in Washington and Hershey,
Pa., the Stones seemed intent on celebrating their legacy. Perhaps consciously
recalling the show they played at the Civic Center (as the Arena used to be
called) in 1969, the group launched into "Midnight Rambler" about
halfway through the set. Thirty-six years ago, the song was a show highlight,
Jagger, dressed in an Uncle Sam-inspired black outfit, striking the stage floor
with a belt as Watts pounded out one of the group's most scabrous beats. That
sort of theater is a thing of the Stones' past, but it was nice to see Jagger
saunter across the stage with seeming murderous intent, appropriate for a song
that invokes no less than the Boston Strangler.
The band further delighted the crowd by including the hauntingly apocalyptic
"Gimme Shelter," an ode to love among the ruins that stands as one of
rock's most disturbingly beautiful anthems. It's a hard song to do live,
especially without the transcendent backing vocals of Mary Clayton, which made
the original song take flight; her successor here, Lisa Fischer, screeched more
than soared. But Jagger's strong vocals and Richards' spare guitar solo were
things of beauty.
The crowd certainly seemed to like it. As the song rang out, Baltimore Mayor
Martin O'Malley could be seen in the audience, playing air guitar.
Of course there were omissions, great songs whose absence couldn't help but
disappoint. Where was "Street Fighting Man?" "Shattered?"
"It's Only Rock n Roll?" "Angie?" Only the Stones could have
a No. 1 song in their canon, like "Angie," and not even perform it.
But with a set that included "Sympathy for the Devil" and "You
Can't Always get What You Want" and "Start Me Up" and
"Happy"... really, what's there to complain about?
No other band has been responsible for so many songs that are absolutely
essential to an understanding of rock and roll. With luck, Baltimore won't have
to wait another 36 years for the Stones to return. But if that's what happens,
here's guessing they'll be worth the wait.
Of course, both Jagger and Richards would be 98 years old. But I wouldn't bet
against them.
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